David Calverley. Who Controls the Hunt? First Nations, Treaty Rights, and Wildlife Conservation in Ontario, 1783–1939

Over the past twenty years, many Canadian works have examined the impact of settler colonialism on Aboriginal rights to harvest natural resources. With Who Controls the Hunt? First Nations, Treaty Rights, and Wildlife Conservation in Ontario, 1783–1939, David Calverley contributes substantially to this literature by studying “changes in First Nations/state relations between 1800 and 1940, specifically as they pertain to Aboriginal hunting and trapping activity in Ontario.” (Fishing rights have been studied elsewhere.) There are four main interests: “the Anishinaabeg of northern Ontario, the federal or Dominion government (primarily the Department of Indian Affairs), the Ontario government (in the form of the Game and Fish Commission and its later manifestations . . . ), and the Hudson’s Bay Company” (4). Each had multiple perspectives that changed over time. The narrative reflects that complexity, discussing the motives, arguments, and actions of numerous people including bureaucrats, local magistrates, lawyers (private and government), fur traders and trappers, Aboriginal hunters, Hudson’s Bay Company directors, federal Indian agents, and sportsmen. Still, the author admits that “this was largely a battle between bureaucrats, with politicians appearing only at crucial moments” (164).

Biology · Environmental ethics · Environmental protection · Geography · Political science · Treaty · Wildlife · Wildlife conservation · Wildlife trade · Ecology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies